March 10, 2003

How Do You Explain America

A few weeks ago, our five-year-old daughter let it be known that her new favorite song is the Dixie Chicks' recording of "Traveling Soldier," which tells the story of a U.S. solider doing his duty in Vietnam, and the girl he left behind. Our daughter, it turns out, didn't know what a "soldier" was. My wife took her to the National Guard Armory to meet some soldiers, and now she is fascinated by them, fascinated that soldiers are on the front of the newspaper, and on the TV news. Fascinated that the soldiers in the desert have a Baskin Robbins to go to way out there in the desert (and can we go there, she wants to know).

Thus began an ongoing conversation about soldiers and war and Sept. 11 and Iraq and the bad man named Saddam.

Our daughter wasn't yet 4 on Sept. 11, and until a few weeks ago had no real concept what had happened. We had shielded her from the images of planes flying into buildings. Indeed, six months ago when the news was on and showed file video clips of al Qaeda terrorists training in the Afghanistan desert by running obstacle courses and swinging across monkey bars, she reacted only to the monkey bars. She likes monkey bars and is quite good on them. Where we saw terrorists, thought of Sept. 11, and looked forward to the day when our soldiers put an end to al Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein that supports Islamic wacko terrorists, she saw only the monkey bars.

But now she knows about Sept. 11, albeit in very general terms. Some bad people crashed some airplanes and hurt a lot of innocent Americans. And now our soldiers are going over there (it's a long way away, don't be scared, you're safe, we tell her) and our soldiers are going to fight the bad man and make him go away. She thinks the 101st is going to kick Saddam in the behind and make him run away. That's good enough for now.

The harder thing to explain to her is why the bad man and his bad friends want to hurt Americans. I told her last night that it is because America is the greatest place to live on the whole planet, and the bad people don't like us because we are free. But does she get it? Does she understand? How do I explain to her the greatness of America - freedom and liberty - in language a 5-year-old can truly understand. I told her that the bad man and his bad friends are mean to little girls and don't let some of them go to school, and they don't let little girls to grow up to be firefighters or ballerinas (her two big dreams right now). I told her the bad man takes the peoples' money and builds big houses for himself while they starve, but she thinks "starving" is waiting 30 minutes to go to Sonic.

It's easy to explain why Saddam is a bad man - even without being graphic and scary. It's harder to explain to her why America is good and, in fact, the greatest nation on earth, and why sometimes we must send soldiers to fight keep us safe.

So, I need your help. How would you explain to a five year old why America is the greatest nation on earth? I'll be glad to publish your suggestions here - just email them to me at bhhobbs-at-comcast.net.

Maybe there are no words. But when the soldiers come back from liberating Iraq, I promised her that I'll take her to the homecoming parade. That way, she'll remember it - and one day, she'll understand why it was such a wonderful and special day.